03709_0077: I Wanted to Keep a Good Horse

AL-73 R. V. Waldrep Dr. Archie C. Waldrep Red Bay, Alabama

I WANTED TO KEEP A GOOD HORSE

In 1903 Dr. Waldrep came to Red Bay to practice medicine, but he was returning home from school, and just incidentally to practice medicine. He's done right well by himself too. He can keep up a bunch of in-laws on what he makes and not even feel it. He can sit in his office and puff on his pipe and not worry about the expense of the tobacco he smokes.

But he is a dreadful gossip. He tells all about the people he doctors. He doesn't mind telling you that Joe T. Beasley isn't sick. He just shakes his head over him and points to the head.

But he can get dirty in his gossip. He was telling just the other day how a woman into his office.

He puffed: "She was worried about her husband. I knew what was bothering her." He stopped for a rich, ripe puff, and a wholesome contemplation. "Her husband was in his wild stage, and he wasn't being true to her. I took the woman into my consultation room, examined her, and I told her what was wrong with her." His chuckle was full and fat, and not a bit in a hurry; for Dr. Waldrep is in 70. The doctor told what was wrong with the woman, but it is not fit for print. 676

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Doc Waldrep is always telling things that are not fit to print. He is careless in his use of biological terms. He speaks freely of deliveries, purgatives, and emetics. You can learn about girls that have gone wrong, about women that are worrying about their husbands, about women who just naturally have to be sick in order to have something to talk about. And all the time there is that soft, gentle, and deep contemplative attitude.

He seems so set, so firmly lodged in his life, so firmly convicted that things don't worry him, that all is a passing show. He is a man with a pipe sitting in a rocking chair. There is smothered joy in his eyes, a comfortable posture to his dumpy body.

Dr. Waldrep always wears a dark suit, not pressed, but a suit, and he wears a tie, suspenders, and when he sits the short legs of his pants slip up and you can see his white calf and the supporters to his socks. In the summer time he often forgets to button all the buttons of his stoggy little belly, and the white of his skin and sometimes his navel peeps out.

You can see him coming across the street to R. V. Waldrep's Store or to J. P. Epps' store, going at a snail's pace, one short step before the other; slowly, thoughtfully he comes. One elbow is outthrust as he holds the stem of his pipe a few inches from his moist lips. On his face there 677

Alabama 3 appears a small, secret grin that is buried in him.

For forty or fifty years he has been around, many more years he romped and drank over the country. Red Bay wasn't here when he first came and doctored on horseback.

"The first schooling I ever got was when I was 8 years old. I went to Uncle Bud Still's school, and the next year I went to Uncle Bill Waldrep's school. Now, let me see...." He puffed on his pipe slowly, and slipped his stocky frame into the worn easy chair. The fan in the ceiling was cool, the smell from the little side room where Doc fixed cuts, painted wounds, and set arms came from medicine. The streets of the town were silent except for an occasional rubbered slither of an automobile. "Let me see, in '81, I went to Miss Florence Barnes, and I went to Bill Nabors' school, too. Now, I think it was out at Rara Avis I went to Uncle Bill Waldrep, that was my pa's brother, you know. Then I went to school out there where the Methodist Church is now. The worst school I ever went to was out at the Bullen place; everybody studied aloud. It was the awfullest racket." His face took on an angelic smile. "Then the Gates boys got up a school, and taught 8 months; my pa and the other people went in together to pay them to teach school. I went there two terms. The other schools I went to were 678

Alabama 4 just 3 months in the summer, but the Gates boys school was 8 months."

"You taught school one year?"

"I taught out at Center Point. I had 35 scholars. When I whipped one I never had to whip him again."

"About that time," said the doctor, "Dr. Collier came home from medical school in Louisville, Kentucy. I was looking around for something to do. I wanted a job that would let me keep a good horse. I wanted a good horse. Dr. Collier came in, and he had a big black horse, a fine horse. So I went over to see him, and I told him what I wanted to do." He thought carefully, and said: "He let me borrow 3 books: anatomy was one of the books." The doctor couldn't remember the rest. "Every Sunday I would go to Dr. Collier's, and he would teach me, drill me on the words."

"When I got to Louisville, Kentucky to go to school, I stayed with some fellow from West Virginny. I didn't want to stay out where they were, but they talked me into it; they told me I could have the feather bed. Back then I liked the feather bed, but I don't care anything about it now.

"On Saturday night, I remember we used to have to give up our room for the girl there to court in. I forget her name. We got tired of having to 679

Alabama 5 get out every Saturday night, and we used to peep through the key hole, and that would make her mad." All the time he was talking, his voice was mellow and slow and plodding, moving carefully forward, stopping to chuckle richly, to take a puff from the pipe that was rarely six inches from his lips. His face was red, round, and covered with a moonlike pleasantness.

"In them days there was two terms, six months each." He puffed and puffed the minutes away. He did not give a picture of the life there; for he didn't try. He did tell in a loose way of putting toe nails in a boy's pockets, mentioned sitting in a room and watching doctors work before students. He did not attempt a vivid portrait of his school years, but behind his face, one knew that the words he said produced a vividness of portraiture that delighted him. In the long pauses, the silent smoking, he was enjoying the memories.

"When I came back in here I had fifty dollars and a horse. I roomed with Miss Florence Barnes' people. The little room I stayed in is still out there on the back of the house."

Dr. Waldrep married, but his wife died, and a year or two later he married once more. He doctored up and down the country. He had interest in the Waldrep and Epps store. He moved his office into the store. His practice extended, and money began to come in. 680